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Tips on Monitoring Your SQL Server Effectively

Finding ways to make your employees more productive should be one of your main goals. When it comes to collecting and accessing data, finding modern solutions to help with this process is a must.

Studies show that small business employees spend nearly 23 percent of their workday manually inputting. Rather than allowing this waste of productivity to occur, you need to use things like SQL servers to make data easier to enter and access when needed.

Once you have your SQL servers in place, finding a way to monitor them is important. Failing to monitor these servers can lead to things like CPU usage issues and memory problems.

Read below to find out how to make SQL server monitoring easy and effective.

 

 

Keep a Close Eye On SQL Server Error Logs

One of the best ways to catch issues with your SQL server before they cause major problems is by reviewing error logs. These error logs will both record problems and provide informational messages to help users diagnose and fix the underlying issues.

Using the read error log feature built into the SQL server, you can easily look at the error logs you have. You will need to check these logs on a regular basis to ensure no new problems have started to occur.

Server and Database Documentation

Having solid documentation on all of your SQL databases, servers and instances is crucial. This documentation will need to include details about configuration settings and even normal default SQL values. Knowing who has access to the various parts of your server can help you pinpoint errors or even malicious intent to steal or compromise business data.

Once you have a clean breakdown of your servers and databases, you can lay out a plan to automate the collection of data. Being able to automatically collect data and store it in a central repository can benefit you and your business greatly. Having a central repository will make it easier to analyze data and make detailed reports.

Capacity Planning is Vital

Getting notifications when your disk space is about to run out on your existing SQL server is important. By getting these alerts, you can increase the disk size and avoid losing data.

The last thing you want is for apps or programs to function improperly due to lack of memory. This is why continuously monitoring your servers is essential.

 

 

Monitoring For Specific Problems

Setting a base set of resource alerts is a great way to monitor for specific problems on your SQL server. Being alerted when things like blocked processes or index problems are present can save you a lot of stress and will keep your database intact.

You can also set alerts to tell you when database corruption is happening. Having your servers compromised can lead to lots of sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. You will also need to monitor any database modifications that occur on your server. Having this information will help you backtrack in the event that the information on a database is compromised due to user error.

If you are unsure about how to set up efficient monitoring for your SQL server, working with IT professionals is probably a good idea. With their assistance, you should have no problem getting this work done in a timely and correct manner.